G'day coolmichael,

Another potential option is to use nested ternary (?:) operators. Here's an example using your "Mostly the given/whens look like this" construct:

$ perl -Mstrict -Mwarnings -E '
    use 5.018;
    no if $] >= 5.018, warnings => "experimental::smartmatch";
    my @tests = qw{abc bar def foo};

    say "*** Using given/when ***";
    for my $foo (@tests) {
        given ($foo) {
            when ("abc")          { say "$foo = exact match" }
            when (["foo", "bar"]) { say "$foo = list match" }
            default               { say "$foo = no match" }
        }
    }

    say "*** Using nested ternary ***";
    for my $foo (@tests) {
        say "$foo = ", (
              $foo eq "abc"                    ? "exact"
            : grep($foo eq $_, ("foo", "bar")) ? "list"
            :                                    "no"
        ), " match";
    }
'
*** Using given/when ***
abc = exact match
bar = list match
def = no match
foo = list match
*** Using nested ternary ***
abc = exact match
bar = list match
def = no match
foo = list match
[download]

Update: s/-Mstrict -Mstrict/-Mstrict -Mwarnings/